Deloris sat in the waiting room of her
doctor’s office. She must have had an anxious look on her face, she
thought to herself as she noticed the looks of concern on the other
waiting patient’s. She stared suspiciously at the child who sat in
the chair across from hers. It was a young boy, maybe 6, with his
face mostly buried in his mother’s arm save for one eye that stayed
on Deloris watchfully. He seemed frightened.
Deloris was growing more and more
agitated. She eyeballed the child with a sideways sneer for a few
minutes then stuck out her tongue forcefully. The child flinched
into his mother’s protective embrace. The mother stood up, arm
still around the child, and led her son to a chair across the room
with a look of disgust aimed right at Deloris. “What’s her
problem?” Deloris thought to herself, further agitated.
“Deloris Tate? The doctor will see
you.” A nurse dressed in obnoxiously colorful scrubs had come out
of the door next to the front desk. As Deloris approached her she had
a passing thought about how ridiculous it was that such a large woman
would be wearing an outfit covered in florescent cartoon hippos. The
nurse gave her the same worried stare.
“I must look how I feel.” Deloris
joked as she walked through the door.
“Let’s hope not, honey.” The
nurse replied.
Deloris grimaced and followed the nurse
into an empty examination room. She took it upon herself to sit on
the papered bench. The nurse set to checking her temperature and
heartbeat.
“The doctor will be right with you,
hun.” The nurse said leaving the room and closing the door behind
her. As the door swung closed Deloris saw a startling and unfamiliar
person in the mirror on the back of the door. There sat a haggard and
filthy creature, with a rat’s nest of hair matted to the sides of
her head. There was mud streaked across her face, blood smeared from
her face down her neck. She looked down at her body. Her clothes were
torn and soiled with dirt and grass stains and god knows what else.
There was dirt under her nails, scrapes up her arms. She couldn’t
believe what she was seeing. “How did I…”
“Good morning!” Dr. Gupta said
cheerfully but mindlessly as he entered the room, nose still in a
file. “Let’s see. You are here for headache?” He looked up from
the file at Deloris and gasped. He took an unconscious step back.
“Oh. Uh. Yes.” Deloris replied,
suddenly very self-conscious. She ran her hands down what used to be
a white t-shirt as if to smooth it out. “ I.. uhh… I’ve been
having these terrible migraines for almost a week now. Umm… I had
to take some time off work. And well…. last weekend I slept for
almost three days straight.”
Dr. Gupta approached her warily,
reaching slowly to pluck a muddy leaf from her hair. He held it away
from himself for a moment both inspecting and presenting the article
as if it might be pertinent to the problem at hand. He stepped on
the pedal to open the trash can and dropped the debris in. He looked
back to her with a stunned expression.
“Has there been a head injury?” He
asked as if he knew the answer already.
“No… well…” Deloris put her
finger to her face wear the dried blood was. “Maybe?” she said
unsure.
“Well lets make an appointment for
you to have a CAT scan this afternoon. And while you're here now
we'll go ahead and get some blood work done and a urinalysis. In the
meantime do you have someone to drive you? You probably shouldn't be
driving until we know if there is a head injury.”
“Uhh. No..” She mumbled
thoughtlessly, “I mean yes. I can work it out.”
The doctor gave her a suspicious look,
“Well be careful. You should have time to get home and... uh...
clean up before you need to be at the radiologists office.”
After Deloris had her blood drawn and
had hap-hazardously peed in a cup and handed it to a nurse she walked
out of the doctor's office and got into the driver's seat of her car.
She looked through her cell phone for a minute pretending to herself
that she might actually call someone for a ride. She turned the key
in the ignition and backed out of her space. Driving was the least of
her worries now.
Deloris decided unconsciously to take
the country road home. She didn't feel like dealing with the traffic
on the highway, and she had a strange desire to be near the trees.
As she came around a wide bend she was forced to slam on her brakes.
I fox stood in the middle of the road, unwilling to move. It just
stood staring in Deloris's eyes and Deloris found herself staring
back. She was enchanted. As the fox walked slowly across the road
and into the trees it did not take it's eyes off of her. She pulled
her car over to the side of the road and got out. The fox was still
there, now at the edge of the woods, looking at her, waiting for her.
It slowly turned and walked into the forest. Deloris followed.
